Maggie's Farm

For the birds that cannot soar, God has provided low branches.

Turkish proverb

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Fyodor Doskoevsky

Reality is only an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Albert Einstein

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Two plus two equals five is not without its attractions.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

Fyodor Dostoevky, The Brothers Karamazov

Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we can't start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand... and not understand... so much. I'm not afraid for you now.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

If you want self-esteem, do esteemable things.

A friend of Bill

The dude is just a young Commie Chicago pol who talks like a preacher, for heaven's sake. Maybe reporters aren't used to hearing preachers.

The News Junkie of Maggie's Farm, yesterday

Krauthammer says:

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.

I think that just about sums it all up. It is endlessly fascinating and dismaying to me that so many people seem to want to be controlled.

Hour by hour, drop by drop,
Pain falls upon the heart
And against our will
And even in our own despair
Comes wisdom from the awful grace of God.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Fascism, at its core, is the view that every nook and cranny of society should work together in spiritual union toward the same goals overseen by the state. "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State," is how Mussolini defined it. Mussolini coined the word "totalitarian" to describe not a tyrannical society but a humane one in which everyone is taken care of and contributes equally. It was an organic concept in which every class, every individual, was part of the larger whole.

From Jonah Goldberg's book, as quoted at No Pasaran. It's what Mark Levin terms "soft tyranny."

To speak of man's search for God is like speaking of the mouse's search for the cat.

C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy. (h/t to Dr. Bob)

Who is wise?  He who learns from every man.
Who is brave?  He who conquers his own urges.
Who is wealthy?  He who rejoices in his portion.
Who is honored?  He who honors others. 

Ben Zoma, from The Ethics of the Fathers

Intelligent people are a dime a dozen. Whenever I meet blogger people and academics I'm agog at how dull and lifeless they are. When people aren't all that bright or intellectual you can just take them as they come, but intelligence expressed as rationalism instead of as wisdom in action has little or nothing to say about whether anybody is a worthwhile person or not. It's become a kind of contra-indicator to me, actually.

A friend

"I reveal myself in my true colors, as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men have not changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves. I also hold one or two beliefs that are more difficult to put shortly. For example, I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos. I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and sisters. Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible."

Kenneth Clark ("Civilization")

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

G. K. Chesterton

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

G.K. Chesterton

From Thomas Merton, via Anchoress' Memories of God:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us…It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.